By your side
by savingthestars
Summary: They were best friends, he swore he'd always be there to protect her. What happens when Harry isn't there to catch Nikki as she falls?


_Just a short one shot that snuck up on me whilst I was staring at my stuffed animals, in particularly my Edward Monkton Penguin.  
I couldn't continue with anything else I was doing until this had been written down..._

_Review and let me know what you think?_

_Enjoy,_  
_Much love x_

**By your side: A silent witness one shot.**

It was late; the night was swooping down blanketing everything in darkness. The rain falling softly on his best friends gravesite should've been a cliché, but somehow, it wasn't. It fell softly over the newly turned soil, patting it down with gentle hands. His heart fluttered, tiny claws scratching at the stone, which had encased it since her death. He breathed in the bitter smell of dirt and rain and the grass that would soon be growing, covering the uneven mound of soil upon which several wreaths and bouquets of flowers lay. Even they would die soon. They would wither and decay until someone thought it prudent to remove them and replace them with fresh ones.

The vibrant colours didn't seem right. The sunny yellow reminded him too much of her hair, the scarlet roses of her spilt blood.

It was wrong that now she lay buried several feet beneath the damp earth, she had been torn away from him too soon. He had never been able to tell her how he felt. He had tried of course, but some obstacle had always reared its ugly head, like the dead body of his ex-girlfriend. He had picked up several hints that she felt the same way, but she had never openly confirmed these thoughts, and now he would never know.

She had been accident-prone but still the thought of her dying had never once approached him. He had misinformed himself – told himself that he would always be there to rescue her. He would always be her knight in shining armour when the time arose.

He hadn't been quick enough this time.

It might surprise those that knew of Nikki's many plights, and her many brushes with death that she hadn't been kidnapped or threatened with any sort of weapon upon her death. The one thing that even he, Harry Cunningham, her best friend, hadn't been able to save her from was a silly little accident.

She'd slipped and fallen in the cutting room, banging her head on one of the slabs before it slammed to the floor rendering her unconscious. It had been late at night and there had been no one else around to hear the accident, or to find her limp lifeless body until early the next morning when Leo had sent a lab tech to retrieve some evidence.

The high shriek of the lab tech had brought the entire lab running, and the sight that lay before them had stopped them all, left them standing there, still as a statue, shocked. They had rushed their beloved colleague to the hospital, but they had all known it was too late. They had been too late.

She was gone.

As he stood in the graveyard with it's wrought iron gate and it's sea of headstones made from marble, concrete and granite, in hues of white, black and grey, he thought of the first time he'd met her.

His heart had stopped before picking up a rapid rhythm, thumping loudly against his chest. His eyes had widened and his mouth had gone dry hanging open slightly before Leo had nudged him and he managed to stutter an introduction. The first thing that had struck him was her beauty. She was angelic. Her blonde hair framed her ivory skin perfectly and her chocolate brown eyes were pools of emotion. Her laugh was melodic, and never failed to bring a smile to his face. Over the years they had formed a close working relationship. They had no sense of personal space and Leo was constantly making remarks about how he had lost count of how many times they touched each other in a single day.

Harry would miss the gentle touches, the feel of her hair as he stroked it tenderly as he soothed her, holding hands, hugging, even simple actions like accidentally brushing against her in the locker room. Harry would miss the tingling sensation that surged through his body whenever he looked at her, and the almost electric feeling when they brushed finger tips whilst reaching for paperwork or performing a post mortem. He would miss the feeling of being able to tell someone everything, there was Leo of course, as much his best friend as she had been, but somehow he wasn't Nikki. Harry couldn't sit and watch a cheesy film over a glass of wine and a Chinese with Leo like he had with Nikki. It was in those moments that they had poured their hearts out to each other, sharing their hopes and fears. It had been in those moments where he had reaffirmed his suspicious, he had been in love with his best friend.

He brought himself back into reality. Back to the aching in his chest where his heart had shattered as the doctor had rambled on, sympathetic words falling from his mouth, only six of them meaning anything at all to Harry.

"There's nothing we could do."

The guilt that submerged Harry was biting away at the young pathologist. There was something he could have done. He could have insisted that she'd gone home, or he could have stayed with her, helped her finish analysing the evidence so she could gone home without it eating at her conscience. He could have prevented her death, but he had been in a mood, the case was tough and all he had wanted was a stiff drink and his bed. He hadn't wanted to wait around, and he couldn't be bothered arguing with her.

Looking around him at the monumental angels guarding over the graves of peoples loved ones and the cracked stone pathways from which weeds protruded he could help but feel over whelmed by the despair. Leo had tried to insist that he take time off to grieve, to mourn her properly, but Harry couldn't do that. He need to work, he didn't something he could throw himself into so that the guilt and anguish didn't get too much. He needed something to stop him thinking about her. At night she was there in his dreams, her face, her scent, her taste, taunting him. At least at work there were other people to talk to, other people craving his attention, other people ready to take his mind off her.

The salty tang of tears filled his mouth as he knelt beside the headstone, on the other side of which a small sculpture of an angel stood. He could feel the chalky dust of the headstone beneath his fingers and the damp seeped through his skin as he rested his forehead against the cool stone.

As the moon rose, the graveyard transformed itself. The translucent light breathed life into the worn, faceless statues of praying children and winged angels. It smoothed away fissures and softened broken edges. In the moonlight, the crooked headstones stood proud, keeping to their duty even as time wore away the messages they bore, the same way people would forget the people buried there. He stood up and walked through the tangled weeds separating Nikki's grave from an empty plot. This space, beneath the bower of an old moss covered oak, was his own. How odd it felt stand there in the dewy grass, knowing someday he would not leave it.  
That some day he would be by Nikki's side once again.


End file.
